From here in CNN.com's iReport, via friend Lila:

A quick overlay that works as welcome, explanation and attribution.

A friendly, spaced, well-designed presentation of crowd contributions.

A project that asks the world to show its handwriting. For people with bad penmanship, like myself, this concept is like Dove's "Real Beauty."

The best argument I've read for the continued removal of handwriting from society's pedestal comes this week from Oberlin prof Anne Trubek in Miller-McCune. About her young son Simon, telling a story aloud:

The moral of the story is that what we want from writing — what Simon wants and what the Sumerians wanted — is cognitive automaticity, the ability to think as fast as possible, freed as much as can be from the strictures of whichever technology we must use to record our thoughts. As Wolf writes: "A system that can become streamlined through specialization and automaticity has more time to think. This is the miraculous gift of the reading brain." This is what Palmer wanted for his students — speed. This is what the typewriter promised Twain. This is what typing does for millions. It allows us to go faster, not because we want everything faster in our hyped-up age, but for the opposite reason: We want more time to think.

…

When people hear I am writing about the possible end of handwriting, many come up with examples of things we will always need handwriting for: endorsing checks (no longer needed at an ATM), grocery lists (smartphones have note-taking functions), signatures (not even needed to file taxes anymore). These will not be what we would lose. We may, however, forsake some neurological memory. I imagine some pathways in our brains will atrophy. Then again, I imagine my brain is developing new cognitive pathways each time I hit control C or double click Firefox. That I can touch-type, my fingers magically dancing on my keyboard, free of any conscious effort (much as you are looking at letters and making meaning in your head right now as you read), amazes me. Touch-typing is a glorious example of cognitive automaticity, the speed of execution keeping pace with the speed of cognition.

Cognitive automaticity! Working through some writer's block and creative disturbance right now, I get a burst just reading about it.

As a kind of fake cursive. Crazy print-haters. Everyone knows America writes in bold, not italics! What kind of nouveau riche crap is this?

Profiled in the Post last week, the Handwriting Without Tears program for children apparently tutors grown-ups as well, "quite a few doctors." You have to wonder about these adults. Or you don't have to wonder, fresh from calligraphy school like you are, but I do. If your handwriting already fought and lost in life once, why go back for another round?

"We're not doing this because we're picky or mean," she said. "We're doing this because we want children to be able to write neatly and quickly." Handwriting isn't rocket science, Olsen said, but it's also [not] innate. "You do not learn to do handwriting like you learn how to talk. You need instruction," she said. "With the investment, good handwriting becomes a habit, like shoe-tying."

Kids should learn to write, yes. But adults should be allowed to forget. I'm not encouraging failure, just reality. Why must our penmanship be gamesmanship? What if we with bad handwriting just need closure? Instead of new tactics, what if we can really use an exit strategy?

Umapagan Ampikaipakan of the Malaysia Star has a column this week about teachers with passion. Ampikaipakan writes about Dead Poets Society and then leads into a teacher of his own.

Now come back with me a little ways, to when I was very young. Back to when I used to have the worst handwriting.

I used to tell people it was because I had "grapho-motor issues." I didn't. That was just a phrase I picked up from Reader's Digest. I just had really bad handwriting.

I had teachers who would refuse to read my work and I had teachers who would rap my knuckles. I had teachers who would give me lectures about how my bad handwriting was indicative of a deviant mind.

But none of this changed me. None of them changed me. I can't even remember their names.

But I had this one English teacher who always had the patience to decipher what I had written. She would always make positive comments about the content of my work and even go as far as to point out certain letters that were particularly attractive.

There was this one time, unable to find any redeeming letters, she circled a full stop and wrote: "What a beautiful full stop, Uma. It's so perfectly round."

A full stop is a period. Wikipedia's definition has a picture. But the moral of the story is that this teacher's passion eventually inspired Ampikaipakan to improve his handwriting.

When I receive the Arlington Adult Education booklet every six months, I have to admit I read it. Remember the community center guitar class? ("I am the only member of the class to have hit puberty.") When the new booklet arrives, I wonder. Can any course fare worse with me?

Handwriting Improvement Workshop
How's your handwriting? Can you read it? Can anyone else read it? What happens when you write quickly; does it degenerate into scribble? Class is intended to detect and analyze your handwriting problems and try to correct them. Together with the instructor, students will discover handwriting errors and offer solutions to improve legibility and speed.

I'm tempted to pay the $59. Just to cause trouble.

A column in today's Chicago Sun-Times tells me that this week is National Handwriting Week. I don't celebrate that holiday. You get the erasible pen industry to honor Left-Handers Day and its people, and then we'll talk.

"I think the pendulum is starting to swing," said Jan Olsen, founder of Handwriting Without Tears, which sells handwriting workbooks and teaching manuals to schools, parents and students. "People are waking up to the fact that employers and schools want people who can write grammatically correct sentences and write with a legible hand."

The Chicago Tribune's Stevenson Swanson goes to great lengths to show that good handwriting is still important and possibly even more important now than in recent years. If you're taking the SAT or you're a doctor who doesn't know how to use a computer.

Boston Globe story: "Handwriting is making a slow comeback in some schools after decades in which many educators shunned serious penmanship studies."

Financed by the erasable pen cartel, no doubt.

1. Breakfast at Shoney's. Say you're having breakfast there with your son. Or your two med school buddies. What do you order? The breakfast specialties or the buffet?

2. Dating a girl with a Sicilian grandmother. It leads to situations that involve cannoli.

3. Elvis meeting Nixon. Smoking Gun presents the letter before the picture. Elvis' handwriting is worse than mine!